The design of known automotive lighting applications based on light-emitting diodes is characterized by highly customized and cost intensive solutions. A large cost factor is presented by the need to include sensors in an LED-based automotive lighting assembly. Typically, an LED-based lighting assembly comprises one or more LED chips mounted to a printed circuit board (PCB) or insulated metal substrate (IMS) by soldering or gluing. Any other additional components, for example components required for added electronic functionality, and the necessary connectors, are soldered to the board. These manufacturing techniques are complex and therefore quite cost intensive. Furthermore, PCB and IMS techniques involve soldering steps. The thermal performance of such an LED-based lighting assembly is limited due to the solder-based technologies used in manufacture. For example, the operating temperature of the finished lighting assembly may be limited to a maximum of about 125° C. to avoid failure of the soldered connections. However, LED-based lighting assemblies of the type described above generate higher ambient temperatures during operation on account of the very high junction temperatures in the diodes. These ambient temperatures can exceed this maximum allowable operating temperature, so that soldered connections in the vicinity of the diodes might fail. Therefore, in the field of automotive LED lighting, thermal management is becoming a key challenge, particularly since production volume is expected to increase substantially.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide an improved LED-based lighting assembly that avoids the problems described above.